Pauline Cafferkey, Nurse who battled Ebola, released from London's Royal Free Hospital
Pauline Cafferkey, a nurse from Scotland who was hospitalized for a third time due to late complication after successfully fighting Ebola, has been discharged, announced Royal Free Hospital in London. Earlier, the nurse has twice recovered from the lethal virus causing serious health issues.
The hospital also announced that the Scottish nurse, who was taken to the hospital last week, is not infectious. It was not the first time when Cafferkey had a meeting with the hospital's infectious diseases team. She had been treated for meningitis in October last year. According to doctors, the nurse developed late complication from Ebola virus in her system.
“Pauline Cafferkey has today (Sunday 28 February) been discharged from the care of the Royal Free Hospital following her admission due to a complication related to her previous infection by the Ebola virus”, the hospital said in a statement.
Cafferkey suffered infection with the deadly virus in 2014 when she worked as a nurse in Ebola affected Sierra Leone. She has been suffering from the disease’s late complications again and again, and health experts think it is unusual. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Ebola is capable of persisting in some parts of the human body which are not covered by the immune system. Body parts like brain, eye and spinal cord are some of the organs where the virus can stay secretly, the WHO statement explained.
In 2015, Cafferkey was treated at London’s Royal Free Hospital twice. During her treatment in October, the hospital’s infectious diseases team found that the Ebola virus was present in the nurse’s bloodstream.
Many health experts have warned that Ebola virus can cause ongoing problems for many survivors. In most of the cases, the problem becomes less frequent, they added.